‘You’re a sick bastard.’
‘I’m sick? That’s rich. You named your son Thomas after your old life. Now that’s sick. I bet if you’d had another son you’d have called him Felix, wouldn’t you?’
‘I want you to leave,’ Daniel said with all the hatred he could muster without raising his voice.
‘I’m not going anywhere without some cash.’
‘I’ve already told you I don’t have any.’
‘Then I’m going to go back into that kitchen and have a lovely chat with the lovely Laura and tell her all the lovely things about her lovely husband. I wonder how she’ll react when I tell her the man she sleeps with every night crushed the fingers of a thirteen-year-old boy with a pair of pliers, or that she’s had two children with a man who set fire to an innocent teenager and laughed while he watched him burn.’
Daniel was stuck against the back wall in the living room. His left hand was clamped to his mouth and tears were streaming down his face as the whole nightmare came flooding back. He had tried so hard to forget it, to block it out, to build a life for himself, and his family, but it was always there. Now, the full memory was back and it was eating away at him.
Daniel fumbled in his pocket for his wallet and opened it. There was eighty pounds in cash which he shoved into Samuel’s hand. He lifted out his bank card and pointed it at him. ‘The PIN is 1191. There’s about three grand in the account. Take the lot. Only, do me a favour; whatever it is you’re taking make sure you give yourself a killer dose because, I swear to God, if you come back here again I’ll beat every ounce of life out of you and I won’t be able to stop until I’ve pummelled you to death. Do we understand each other?’
Samuel took the blue plastic card in his dirty, grubby hands.
Daniel turned away, opened the door and found his son standing on the other side.
‘Is everything all right, Dad?’ Thomas asked.
‘Everything’s fine, son. Samuel’s just remembered he needs to be somewhere else.’
‘That’s right. Thomas. Sorry I can’t stay. Wish your family a merry Christmas from me. I hope you all get what you deserve.’
SEVENTY-TWO
‘Did you ever see Daniel Hartley again?’ Matilda asked Samuel Bryce.
‘No.’
‘When did you find out he’d died?’
‘The thing is, I don’t really remember much about that Christmas, or afterwards. I cleared his bank account like he said I could. It took me a couple of weeks to empty it. I had to write the PIN on my arm in case I forgot it.’
‘Did you blow the lot on drink and drugs?’ Amy asked.
‘Certainly did. Best Christmas ever, from what I remember.’
‘Did you go back to Manchester to see Daniel Hartley or his family in January 2014?’ Matilda asked, raising her voice slightly.
‘I honestly can’t answer that. We kept buying more meth and we’d lose days, sometimes a full week. I didn’t know what I was doing.’
‘Where’s Caitlyn now? Could we speak to her?’
‘Not without holding a séance. She died in February 2014.’
‘Overdose?’
‘She needed it. The bloke who sold us the meth said he had a few mates who’d pay her a grand to spend the night with them. She didn’t want to, but I talked her into it. We didn’t have much of Daniel’s money left and needed everything we could get. The night she left I told her I loved her for the first time,’ Samuel’s voice broke and his bottom lip began to wobble. ‘She said it back to me too. The next morning, I found her in the living room. She’d been beaten black and blue. She wouldn’t talk to me. It took me all day to get it out of her. They weren’t a couple of his mates, there was a whole gang of them. She lost count of how many there were. They did anything they wanted with her and she just had to take it. They kicked her out when they’d finished and didn’t give her a penny.’
Samuel was crying. He had genuine feelings for Caitlyn and he’d encouraged her to go out that night. He’d sent her to her death.
‘I cleaned her up. I told her it would be all right. We’d move away, start a new life. She’d given up though, I saw it in her eyes. She said it was too late. No matter where we moved it would always be with her, in her head. She told me she couldn’t live like this any longer, and she wanted to go to sleep. I let her.’
‘Did she give herself the overdose?’ Amy asked.
Samuel nodded. He couldn’t speak. There were genuine tears of sadness pooling in his eyes.
‘What happened after that?’
‘The next day I took her to the park and left her in the bushes. She was found later that day. I saw a story in the newspapers a few weeks later saying the police were still appealing for witnesses to come forward to identify her. They’re probably still waiting.’
‘I’m sorry about Caitlyn, Samuel,’ Matilda said.
‘So am I.’
‘Where was this flat you lived in?’ Amy asked.
‘Near the train station in Leicester. Just off Wellington Street.’
‘Samuel,’ Matilda asked. ‘Going back to Daniel Hartley. Is it possible you killed him while on crystal meth and not remember doing it?’
‘I’ve no idea.’
‘Daniel’s son, Thomas, is currently serving life in prison for killing his father, mother, and eight-year-old sister, Ruby. He’s maintained his innocence from day one, and I believe him.’
Samuel shrugged.
From her inside pocket, Matilda took a photograph of Thomas Hartley. It was the standard photo taken at school. He was flashing a toothy smile, head up high, back straight, grinning to the camera. He was a handsome boy, smart and tidy. He looked nothing like that now. The life had been torn out of
